Artist Develops Unreal Engine Plug-In for Real-Time Light & Shadow Painting

Karim Yasser is developing an Unreal Engine 5 plug-in that lets artists paint light and shadow like a 2D drawing in real time and non-destructively. Its key approach is storing the lighting work in te

A plug-in in development has been unveiled that lets users handle lighting and shadows directly in Unreal Engine 5 scenes as if painting with a brush. Karim Yasser's Real-time Light and Shadow Painting in Unreal allows users to make nondestructive adjustments while checking the lighting results in real time, and proposes a workflow for regaining control over work stored in textures even after completion. The core change is that it can reduce the step of waiting for the render result before making adjustments during the repeated process of arranging lights.

Editing Lighting Like a 2D Drawing

The tool includes Paint, Smudge, Flatten, Smooth, Noise, Gradient, and Lasso functions. Users can approach it by filling broad areas with Gradient and refining edges or transitions in shading with tools like Smudge and Smooth. Rather than a tool for changing an object's material or modeling, it is a workflow that aims to edit the scene's light and darkness directly as subjects of art direction.

The Role of Gobos and Spotlights

Yasser explains that it was difficult to achieve the desired level of control using existing gobos and light blockers alone. The new plug-in continues to support applying gobo presets while also allowing spotlights to be used with both global and local lighting. In other words, it is closer to adding an editing layer for precise light and shadow placement than replacing existing lighting tools.

Still in Development

The plug-in is being developed as part of a larger suite of tools intended to overcome limitations in Unreal Engine lighting work and speed up the production workflow. Additional custom shapes are also planned, and an early-access version is expected to be provided soon, but the exact release date and distribution method have not been disclosed. Therefore, what has been revealed so far shows a direction for turning lighting work into a texture-based, repeatable editing process rather than a feature list for a finished product.

Source: Karim Yasser's development announcement · 80 Level original article